1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved method of organizing and presenting complex, detailed information stored in electronic form. The invention may find particular use in organizations that have a need to document repeatable processes to reflect its work. Typically, such organizations need to define processes that address a variety of related work domains, such as methodologies, and a desire to publish this information on a corporate intranet or the Internet.
2. Background Information
A methodology is a collection of information that explains how to plan, mobilize and/or execute a certain type of work. In other words, a methodology is a specific way of performing a multi-stage operation that implies precise deliverables and/or outcomes at the end of each stage. Deliverables are measurable results or outputs of a process. Thus, a methodology defines types of work processes in terms of measurable results. A well-defined methodology generally defines a business organization's best practices for accomplishing a given task and incorporates that organization's terminology. In this way, employees are able to refer to and integrate these best practices into their day-to-day performance of responsibilities. In order to take full advantage of this wealth of knowledge, methodologies must be accessible to various levels of employees throughout the organization. Publishing methodologies on an organization's intranet or securely on the Internet makes the methodologies instantly accessible to potentially any authorized individual throughout the world.
Three technical problems are generally encountered when defining and using a methodology across an organization. First, finding the appropriate content in a methodology using conventional browser interfaces is often difficult. Typically, methodologies are customized for specific business domains using interfaces and object labels that vary from one domain to another. For employees switching work roles from one domain to another or one project to another, not being familiar with the different interfaces and organization of information within a methodology makes it hard to locate the specific information that supports a given context. In organizations where this information is made accessible on the Internet, poorly designed interfaces result in an increased number of data files, or documents, consuming large amounts of storage space.
Second, traditional organizational models for accessing and displaying methodologies are inflexible. Typically, a methodology will be defined across multiple levels of hierarchically arranged data. There may be as many as six or more levels of detail hierarchically arranged in conventional methodologies. A typical user will need to drill through these levels to obtain the relevant information. The information at a given level may not be associated with the needs of users at a given role level, requiring greater navigation up and down through the hierarchy to locate pertinent information. As the information is published on the Internet, more levels of abstraction directly translates into increased network traffic and strained network resources.
Third, the data representative of highly integrated methodologies are difficult to maintain as a result of the high volume of explicit and implied relationships that exist among methodology data objects. If the data is spread over multiple levels of abstraction, the complexity involved in maintaining this information increases. Additionally, storage space is required to maintain each level. Thus, minimizing the levels of abstraction reduces the amount of data being stored, and keeping the data to a minimal level curtails the complexities involved in updating and supplementing an organization's methodology collections.
The present invention solves these technical problems by providing a new paradigm for storing, maintaining, delivering and transforming the data representative of the methodology.